Gauri Gill – Suman & Kalavati (2010)

Exhibition poster featuring the work, Suman and Kalavati (2010), by Indian master photographer, Gauri Gill. The poster has been released in conjunction with Louisiana's extensive exhibition of more than 200 works revolving around Gill's depictions of life in marginalized rural communities, outside India's urban centers. Here it is the portrait of two girls, taken in a photo studio set up in a tent, as part of a workshop Gill held at a festival for girls and women in the desert town of Lunkaransar.

The participants in the workshop themselves helped set the conditions for how they wanted to be portrayed. In subsequent workshops, they learned to use the camera themselves and create their own images, and one of the participants then opened a photo studio in his village.

From her base in New Delhi, Gauri Gill has attracted attention on the international art scene, not least at documenta in 2017 and the Venice Biennale in 2019, with an original body of work that encompasses several photographic genres—from classic documentary photography to staged tableaus, as well as numerous works created in collaboration with others.

Gauri Gill places modern India's overlooked and outsiders in the middle of the picture—and thus in our field of vision. Giving visibility to girls and women, particularly from rural areas dominated by patriarchal power structures, is a major driving force in much of Gill's work.

The same is the desire to emphasize a diversity of voices and points of view, which is expressed in experimental collaborations and collective works.

The portrait—based on close relationships with the people and places portrayed—forms the central focal point of her extensive body of work, which engages with poetic beauty, empathy, humor and political engagement.